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I bet you don't think a lot about blogging platforms anymore. It's a piece of technology we take for granted. So easy to do, just a repeatable platform ready for you to fill with any words you want after a brief sign-up session, some custom colors and like magic, you have a blog.

Blogs about ice cream, bad boyfriends, terrible bosses, political conspiracies, how bad celebrities dress, tea, cupcakes, handbags, guns, beagles, the list goes on. Tumblr and the rest of those blogging platforms have made it quite easy for all of us, that is those of us that live in parts of the world where we are free to criticize our government's policies, to express ourselves wholly. We live in a world where we don't mind if the government sees our photos, knows the music we listen to or what books we read.

But to some, like Esra'a Al-Shafei, it does matter. She is known for a lot of things, but the thing I want you know about her is she believes in, and has created, a number of platforms that give thousands of people a voice who otherwise must hide their voices, their music and in a way, their lives.

We want our humanity and our futures in our own hands and we use the internet and other forms of technology to fight for those rights. —Esra'a Al-Shafei

She is defined in many ways. Blogger, Bahraini civil rights activist, entrepreneur, founder and executive director of Mideast Youth, founder of Mideast Tunes, a music for social change platform, a senior TED Global Fellow, named one of the 100 most creative people in the world, music lover and advocate of music as a means to free speech and social change, a woman, and most importantly, a human being like all of us.

Most of the interviews with Al-Shafei reference the Arab Spring. She feels that's understandable since it's relevant and most likely to capture people's attention, but that's not what she is about, she was a part of it, but it doesn't define her.

"My work, and my mission, really goes beyond this," says Al-Shafei. "I have always been interested in stories and movements that are too unpopular to make it to the headlines, or that generally don't generate international attention, despite being equally significant."

This is a Q and A about her projects, her thoughts on current affairs, her passion to give a voice to those that don't have one, music and the most important piece of technology in her life.

You are intensely passionate about giving people a voice where they don't have one, the freedom to express without censorship, what are your thoughts on Twitter's announcement that it will now censor tweets within specific countries?

Al-Shafei: I am of course extremely concerned about Twitter's direction here. I understand the position they are in but it would have been much more meaningful for them to attempt to fight the censorship altogether by not resorting to such methods or by making their users jump through hoops to gain access to these tweets. We deal with so much censorship as it is and this feels like a significant step backwards. I really hope that Twitter will stick to its values by revising these policies that will make our work much more difficult and which will encourage further surveillance by governments.

Okay, so when it boils down to it, what is the single most important piece of technology out there for you?

Al-Shafei: The most important piece of technology and platform that has affected my life is WordPress. WordPress really empowered me to become more outspoken. About eight years ago, I remember struggling so much to set up a website that I can add a lot of personality into, and WordPress made that possible for me. Half of our sites are still powered by it.

I think it's these kinds of obvious tools or platforms that we've seen so much of and therefore gotten used to that a lot of us now take for granted, but honestly I can't imagine being without it. I'm sure more services like Tumblr will emerge and maybe take its spot as the go-to blogging platform but I don't think I will ever forget what WordPress did for me in those earlier days when starting out was a monumental struggle.